An application development and testing environment that can improve development infrastructure availability and flexibility.

Mixed workload support that can help reduce development costs.

A high fidelity development and test environment that can streamline the delivery of production-ready applications.

Current levels of the IBM z/OS® software, giving access to new run-time capabilities for development and testing purposes.

An environment for employee education on System z that is approachable and portable.

Application development and testing environment

Create new applications using z/OS features in a development and test environment prior to pre-production build and test on the mainframe.

Provide a z/OS test environment to a wider range of mainframe developers and testers by providing testing tools on individual developer desktops or to teams on shared servers.

Allow mainframe operating systems, middleware and software to run on Intel and Intel-compatible platforms, eliminating the need for System z mainframe hardware during the initial set of development activities.

Enable developers to implement quick test environment changes, such as defining new transactions and resource definitions using the IBM CICS® Explorer® tools in Rational Developer for System z, without involving mainframe production operations staff.

Build and test new System z applications at virtually any time without impacting shared mainframe environments or processes.

Mixed workload support

Provide a small-scale test environment for developers to run z/OS and z/OS middleware on an Intel or Intel-compatible workstation, taking advantage of a distributed development system that can be more cost effective.

Use a more modern and agile team environment that accelerates delivery of new workloads spanning multiple platforms.

Take advantage of a personal or team-centric approach for developers to implement and test code changes in an isolated and controllable System z environment.

Eliminate mainframe usage formerly required for development to help increase mainframe production capacity.

High fidelity development and test environment

Use actual z/OS middleware to help reduce the retesting and modifications required when moving applications from the unit test environment to the quality assurance or mainframe pre-production stage.

Provide a test environment functionally comparable to a test environment on the mainframe.

Work with an isolated test environment to test application changes that can be merged into the next level of testing using tools, such as IBM Rational Team Concert™.

Take advantage of the same environment to develop and test new applications and handle maintenance changes.

Run z/OS, middleware and other z/OS software on Intel and Intel-compatible platforms, eliminating the need for a System z mainframe for employee education activities.

Experiment without fear of destroying anything, as the environment can be easily reset.

Support multiple users with their own system for quicker, more flexible learning.

Facilitate System z education activities anytime, anywhere.

Note: Rational Development and Test Environment for System z can only be used for development, testing, employee education, or demonstration of applications that run on z/OS. It may not be used for production workloads of any kind, nor for robust development workloads, including without limitation, production module builds, pre-production testing, stress testing, or performance testing.

For your convenience, the tabs below identify the supported releases of Rational Development and Test Environment for System z
from which you can select detailed system requirement reports for different contexts (by Operating System, by component). Note that clicking a link will always generate a new, up-to-date report.